


Heuk Chi May be Full of Snark but He Has a Lot Going On Inside

by granny_griffin



Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: Gen, post Tae-Jun’s redemption arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:41:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21884680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/granny_griffin/pseuds/granny_griffin
Summary: Heuk Chi gets a moment to think about life, the universe, and everything. Also there is a rock.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	Heuk Chi May be Full of Snark but He Has a Lot Going On Inside

**Author's Note:**

> Amelia, I’m not sure what you expected from a Heuk Chi fic but it probably wasn’t this. Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas :D

Heuk Chi couldn’t remember the last time he cared.

He brushed the clumps of dirt from his spade and continued chopping up the dry earth. It was going to be a water channel for the fields once everyone else finished digging the well. It was shallow now—more to mark the spot for the channel than anything. Someone had come earlier and stuck twigs in the ground along the projected path and tied strips of bright cloth to their ends. The dry earth was not strong enough to hold them up for long. This needed to be done today. Nobody wanted to crouch alone in the hot sun and dig a channel in the midday heat. Nobody except Heuk Chi. He didn’t care.

This was the fifth village Tae-Jun had set up headquarters in. He kept up the facade of hunting the Happy Hungry Bunch, but everyone knew that he had gotten over that long ago. Tae-Jun was not good at secrets. That is how Heuk Chi had found out about the princess. He supposed most of the soldiers knew Tae-Jun was in love with her. He did not think anyone else realized that though she had died twice, she was yet alive. Tae-Jun had seen her. She was the one who had set him on this quest. His love for her is what drove him to help these people.

Or at least, that was why he had begun to help them. The love had grown up and spread out until now Tae-Jun—Tae-Jun who once had barely been willing to stand—was ready to face armies by himself if that is what it would take to protect the fire tribe peasants. 

Heuk Chi wanted that—not to fall in love, but to feel something. Life would be so much easier if whatever emotion had even been able to motivate someone like Tae-Jun would come and fill him up and give him a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

Then again, Tae-Jun’s love had also nearly gotten the princess killed.

Maybe it was better to live like this—head clear of everything. He had no sentimentality stirring him up to good, but also nothing egging him on to do evil. Where other men stood at a banquet, immersed in the smells and noises and tastes and lights, Heuk Chi walked on a mountain in a fog. Everything was blank like the mist. The world barely existed. There was only Heuk Chi and whatever path he chose.

The spade struck against something hard. Heuk Chi snapped out of his reverie and looked down to see a large rock buried directly in his way. He would have to dig out all around it in order to loose it from its spot. He smiled. He was crouching in the sun and the dirt and somehow he had torn a hole in the knee of his parts and rubbed the skin off of his knuckles and this was him. This was his choice. He chose not to tell his superiors about the dead princess who was not dead. He chose to ignore the Happy Hungry Bunch in favor of helping Tae-Jun carry out his ridiculous plans. He chose to start work on the irrigation systems so that a village full of people he didn’t know would have a sustainable source of food. 

Maybe someday it would get easier. Maybe if he kept on making choices like this, the right feelings would get dragged along under them and come to bear him up and finally he would care about something again. Or maybe it would just go on hard until the day he died.

Either way, Heuk Chi knew that this was good, and that was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](https://granny-griffin.tumblr.com)


End file.
